SNB & CHF

The latest retail sales report seems to have given Wall Street something to cheer about. Headlines touting resilience in consumer spending increased hopes of a “soft landing” boosting the stock market. However, as is often the case, the devil is in the details. We uncover a more troubling picture when we peel back the layers of this seemingly positive data. Seasonal adjustments, downward revisions, and rising delinquency rates on credit cards and auto loans suggest...

**Navigating the Commodities Landscape: Top Investment Picks for 2024**As the global economy continues to evolve in the face of technological advancements, shifting geopolitical landscapes, and environmental challenges, investors are seeking new avenues to diversify and strengthen their portfolios. Among the myriad of options available, commodities have consistently emerged as a resilient and promising asset class. From precious metals to energy resources and...

A July poll shows that a majority of the American public does not support sending U.S. troops to defend Taiwan or Ukraine, sentiment that lines up with findings from other recent surveys on these heated subjects, which suggests that Americans appear to be warming to restraint and non-interventionism in international affairs.Indeed, another poll, conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in February found that a majority of Americans (56%) do not believe that...

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell held a press conference at the annual Jackson Hole economic conference today, and he all but said that a September cut to the federal funds rate is a done deal: “The time has come for policy to adjust. The direction of travel is clear.”Naturally he threw in the usual propaganda phrases about how the Fed is data driven. He continues: “the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of...

“Having to manage a complex home produces a deadweight loss to both society and the individual.” - John Tamny and Jack Ryan (2024)A man’s home is his castle, says the old adage, but John Tamny and Jack Ryan thumb their nose at the sacred “American Dream” of home ownership in their new book Bringing Adam Smith into the American Home. They are not the first to do so—the great Florence King derided it often and with pleasure—yet, to still do so, makes this book a rare...

No American politician running for office wants to talk about taxes—unless, of course, it’s to promise a tax cut. No Misesian views taxes with anything but suspicion, and Mises himself held some principled views on taxes:Taxes are necessary. But the system of discriminatory taxation universally accepted under the misleading name of progressive taxation of income and inheritance is not a mode of taxation. It is rather a mode of disguised expropriation of the...

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More Fight against skills shortage is insufficient, says Swiss audit office This content was published on Aug 27, 2024 The federal government has been providing the economy with financial support for years to...

Close to the Czech border, south of Dresden in the German state of Saxony, lies Glashütte, a picturesque town of 6,700 inhabitants. As the German Watch Museum, its main visitor attraction, suggests, the town is the centre of the country’s high-end watchmaking industry. In 1845, after years of apprenticeship with makers of fine watches in France and Switzerland, Ferdinand Adolph Lange opened a workshop in Glashütte with a loan from the Saxon authorities, founding what...

Homeschooling has never been an experiment. Parents teaching their children the individual and unique things which they believe they should know has not only been the way of life before the public school experiment, but is the most libertarian way to address the total governmental failure and inefficient model of so-called education.Public schools have long since been incapable of keeping up with the trajectory of our Information Age, unable to keep students safe...